John Ford

  • 3 Godfathers (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) While the 1948 colour version of 3 Godfathers is relatively well-known, I chose to watch it as the second film of a double bill with the earlier version of the same story—the 1936 version of Three Godfathers. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because I found myself liking the 1936 version more than the better-known one. Of course, there’s a reason why the 1948 version is the better-known—it’s directed by John Ford, with John Wayne in the lead role and colour cinematography to make it pop. It simply plays better nowadays. Unfortunately, which the premise of the story remains the same (three criminals on the run encounter a dying woman and her baby in the middle of the desert, only to swear to her that they’ll bring the infant to safety), this later version is considerably toned-down from the previous one. John Wayne being John Wayne, his character is made to be much nicer: Not as much of a scoundrel, not a killer, barely a thief. He, significantly, makes it alive to the end of the film. This version does restructure the opening act of the film to be focused on the three godfathers rather than the small-town citizens, providing a contrast to them in the previous version: a far more defendable choice in terms of dramatic unity, but one that does make the film less interesting. Colour cinematography has its advantages, but this post-war version does put far emphasis on the parallels between the three godfathers and the story of the nativity, all the way to a blatant visual comparison. It’s still not a bad film—the central conflict is quite unlike most westerns, and uses the setting as an obstacle rather than a justification by itself—but comparing 3 Godfathers shows how much better it could have been.

  • Mogambo (1953)

    Mogambo (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s hard not to think about Howard Hawks’ 1962 Hatari in seeing Mogambo. The comparisons are more than superficial: Both are American films from legendary directors (here, John Ford) starring aged screen legends (here, Clark Gable) as strong men living on the African savannah and falling in love with a passing American. Both make the most out of their on-location shooting, both presenting a very familiar safari-based portrayal of Africa. There were other famous African-set studio pictures in the early 1950s (The African Queen, The Snow of Killimajaro and King Solomon’s Mines come to mind) but it’s the later Hatari that comes closest to it. In a role almost custom-made for an actor of his stature, Gable plays the great white hunter, with the amazing backing of a captivating Ava Gardner, and a star-making turn from a young Grace Kelly. It’s almost pointless to say that the film does feel quite racist today, as white protagonists have free rein over the savannah for a gorilla hunt (!)… but there you go. Not quite as technically polished as Hatari, Mogambo nonetheless benefits greatly from its location shooting, interaction with animals and Ford’s eye for capturing widescreen landscapes. The film is not that good, but it’s easy enough to watch in between the love triangle (wobbly but effective) and the nice location footage. Plus, I don’t recall another film in which Gardner shares the screen with a baby elephant and (later) a big cat.

  • Two Rode Together (1961)

    Two Rode Together (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Considering my lack of affection for westerns and my Canadian citizenship, it’s probably no accident if I don’t have much fascination for director John Ford, nor his seemingly endless list of westerns. But I do like James Stewart, and his starring role in Two Rode Together was worth a look. The story is immediately reminiscent of the much superior The Searchers, as the protagonist goes looking for settlers “kidnapped” by Native Americans. Of course, there’s little heroism here, as the revisionist westerns take hold over a new decade (after Hollywood’s severe overdose of westerns in the 1950s) and Stewart seems only too happy to keep going in the same misanthropic streak he enjoyed in the films he shot with Anthony Mann. His mercenary lawman isn’t admirable, although he does get the girl (against all odds) and the happy-ish ending. I didn’t like much of Two Rode Together: the script is an ambitious mess going in far too many directions than strictly necessary, and the film (despite being shot in colour) is a somewhat downbeat carnival of dashed expectations and overturned presumptions. Whatever humour remains seems curiously glum or immediately dashed by far more sombre material. Even the relatively complex treatment of its Native American character seems hampered by the director’s old-fashioned shooting techniques. While Two Rode Together is worth a look if you’re interested in Stewart’s western oeuvre, or Ford’s touch on material he didn’t believe in (he famously directed the film for money and a personal favour, believing that the material strayed too close to The Searchers). The best scene, amazingly enough, is just Stewart and Richard Widmark chatting away about various things while the camera remains locked on them — it does suggest a far more avant-garde western made entirely of casual conversations and static camera shots à la early Kevin Smith. But not really. Two Rode Together ends up being an unwieldy collection of elements that don’t necessarily fit together, indifferently directed albeit with capable actors and the saving grace of a half-optimistic ending. That’s not much, though… even for Stewart fans.

  • The Long Voyage Home (1940)

    The Long Voyage Home (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Hailing from that strange period in history where Hollywood was egging an isolationist United States to support England’s WW2 efforts but not quite yet under fire, The Long Voyage Home adapts and updates four Eugene O’Neill plays to contemporary times, following a team of sailors aboard a British steamer during the early days of World War II. This being said, it’s not quite a war movie despite a number of battle sequences and a glum conclusion: it’s far more focused on the characters and their relationship in the face of world events. As a result (plus the presence of John Wayne, annoying at the best of times), I don’t think too highly of the result—the film does feel overlong due to its lack of narrative density. The fairly grim narrative also contributes to the feeling of being stuck in the film longer than strictly necessary: this is not a fun ride, and while you can recognize director John Ford’s Western-ish touch, the setting does not lend itself to the same tone. It’s easy to see why The Long Voyage Home was nominated for a few Academy Awards (including Best Picture), and it does offer a drama of unusual scope when most war movies of the time were more restrained, but it’s not really a film you’ll watch more than once.

  • The Last Hurrah (1958)

    The Last Hurrah (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Hollywood has long been fascinated by the American political system, and even older films still have something relevant to say about it. In The Last Hurrah, John Ford directs a rumpled Spencer Tracy as he plays an older veteran mayor facing his last election (his “last hurrah,” although the title clearly anticipates a more definitive conclusion) and letting his perceptive nephew tag along for the ride. Perhaps the biggest strength of the film is Tracy’s weary and captivating performance as the engine of a vast political machine — although this is not necessarily portrayed all that negatively as he fights against the blueblood elites and still has the interest of the people at heart. He’s a canny operator, capable of unorthodox power plays such as threatening to install a clearly incompetent person in an important position just to see his family squirm with the anticipated disgrace. The election night itself is portrayed with some skill, as victory ends up yielding to the sum of the various incidents in the film. The Last Hurrah veers into more sentimental territory toward the third act, although it doesn’t quite yield to sappiness at the end. It’s often surprisingly nuanced, even-handed in considering the trade-offs inherent not just in elections, but in governing as well.

  • They Were Expendable (1945)

    They Were Expendable (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Hollywood’s World War II years were thick with propaganda films. It seems as if every conceivable part of the US armed forces had a movie or two made about them, usually showing the American soldiers as good people fighting the good fight on behalf of the good people at home. Most of them do have some intrinsic interest for military buffs—even sanitized and simplified for mainstream audiences, these movies usually delight in showing us the way the armed forces operated, and many feature historical footage of real military training or operations. They Were Expendables squarely fits in this category: it’s a look at the introduction of PT boats in the Pacific theatre, featuring John Wayne and Robert Montgomery as clashing officers with different views on the usefulness of those ships—Montgomery as a true believer in the capabilities, while Wayne is cast as the voice of skepticism at the sight of those light, fast boats. The special effects are not bad for the time, as they blend studio footage with what was shot in Florida (a credible stand-in for the Philippines, where the story takes place). While They Were Expendable does have its share of battle scenes, perhaps the most interesting material happens at the PT boat base in repairing and maintaining the ships. Director John Ford seemed to enjoy this movie because the entire film is detailed, credible and enjoyable to follow. Its weakest part, unfortunately, is John Wayne—the film seems to spend far too much time deferring to him, giving him the spotlight and a love interest. (Hilariously enough, the credit sequence is studded with military acronym to represent the service record of the director, actors and crew… except for John Wayne, who never served in the armed forces and so has nothing but his name on-screen.) It’s really interesting that They Were Expendable manages to transform a rout (at the time of the story conception in 1942, the Americans had retreated from the Philippines, vowing to return) into a triumphant film… but this is neither the first nor the last Hollywood production to pull off such a trick. Still, this is a film that still holds some interest today. Thanks to future president John F. Kennedy’s service, there would be other PT boat movies (most notably PT-109), but none with as much credibility in showing the way men dealt with those new ships—part of it has to do with how They Were Expendable takes a break from the battle to talk about operational issues.

  • Rio Grande (1950)

    Rio Grande (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I’m cooler than other reviewers on John Ford Westerns and John Wayne as a lead, so I wasn’t expecting much of Rio Grande … and those low expectations worked in the film’s favour. As it starts, we meet a typical Wayne protagonist (actually, the same one as in Fort Apache): a commanding officer in a faraway posting, competent and living as unremarkable a life as possible in those circumstances. But then two new characters walk in: First, his long-estranged son joins the post as a recruit sent from the East, leading to a reunion that is less emotional and more along the lines of no favouritism being tolerated. Then, to complicate everything in between the enemy attacks and peacekeeping role, his estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara, about a third less spectacular without the red hair in a black-and-white film) also walks in, demanding that her son be bought from military service. (And, um, also discuss how her plantation was burnt down by her husband’s men.)  Those familial complications do bring a lot to Rio Grande, and offer a slightly more unusual aspect to this western that the typical frontier genocide material. Because, of course, the hordes of Native Americans are out to kill everyone in this film—your average mid-century western was still horribly racist and Rio Grande doesn’t really deviate from that orthodoxy.  It certainly works better if you can ignore that aspect, but I’ll completely understand if you can’t, especially as the film’s later heroics all focus on killing as many undistinguished nonwhites as possible. This fairly important caveat does explain why Rio Grande is far more interesting today when it deals with tensions between a family and the military life. To be clear, it’s a slickly made Western by the standards of the time, but it’s not groundbreaking, nor does it offer anything spectacular from either Wayne, O’Hara or director John Ford. At times, especially when coupled with Ford’s two other “Cavalry” films—Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon—it often feels like another episode in a longer-running series. But it’s more interesting than I thought, and any movie that manages to overcome my overall dislike of John Wayne has to be complimented for it.

  • Mary of Scotland (1936)

    Mary of Scotland (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Considering the sheer number of 1930s historical dramas, no one will blame anyone for overlooking Mary of Scotland—neither a terrible nor extraordinary example of the form. But there are a few interesting names here, and a vexing historical conundrum to resolve. Considering that the real story of Mary of Scotland does not end well, history-minded viewers will be most interested by the film’s almost-desperate attempts to rewrite history so that the ending is palatable to audiences. (I’m not sure how the Catholic propaganda played in 1936, but let’s just say that it has not aged well.)  But so did nearly every other historical costume drama of the time—and Mary of Scotland certainly fits within the lavish production means used for those movies—extravagant costumes, scripts that combined historical material with accessible dialogue, and sets that crammed the most they could fit in a Hollywood sound stage. Where the film gets interesting, perhaps for the wrong reasons, is in the top names involved in toe production. Fredric March, sure (I’ve never been much of a fan), but Katharine Hepburn yes! She wasn’t particularly well suited for the role at that stage of her career (her take on royalty in The Lion in Winter would be far more successful) and the film seems to be using her for royal demeanour and little else. But the surprise here is seeing John Ford, best known for all-American westerns, undertake an early job-for-hire here as the film’s director. None of his trademarks show up here, which is reasonable considering that this was a fairly early effort limited by mid-1930s Hollywood technical means. None of this makes Mary of Scotland particularly interesting, unless you’re using the film as a parallax measure against other films or later entries in the principals’ filmography. Or if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool fan of 1930s period dramas, of course…

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I hoped that a second viewing of Mary of Scotland would help me warm up to the movie, but I don’t think it changed much: Katharine Hepburn’s royal performance is the film’s single best asset, and the film spins its wheels for a very long time before delivering a rather good final sequence in which our two strong female protagonists finally meet face to face. It’s mildly interesting to put Mary of Scotland up against more recent historical epics and see how they did things back in the 1930s, but there are probably more engaging films in which to do this kind of comparative analysis. John Ford directs a picture as a costume drama that we wouldn’t necessarily associate with his later career or favourite themes (scuttlebutt has it that he and Hepburn had an affair during the film’s production), but that only brings marginal interest to a surprisingly average film.

  • My Darling Clementine (1946)

    My Darling Clementine (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I’m aware that My Darling Clementine is often praised as a western classic (it even gets a rare “1”—Masterpiece—rating from the influential Mediafilm service), and I’m partially nonplussed by the acclaim. I’m not going to make an argument that it’s a bad movie: with Henry Fonda playing Wyatt Earp in an early take on the O.K. Corral shootout, it’s a John Ford production executed with all of the skill that a big-budget western could muster in the 1940s. Even by Hollywood standards, it’s a very fanciful retelling of history that invents or combines (or kills) historical figures, rearranges the chronology of events and certainly imbues them with virtues or failings that makes the entire thing more accessible as a story. Actually, it goes even further than that: Watching My Darling Clementine, there’s a palpable desire to create a piece of American mythology. A desire fully fulfilled, in that the O.K. Corral shootout has been told and retold in movies even decades later. That, too, plays against My Darling Clementine: To modern viewers weaned on Tombstone, this early take feels unfocused, ham-fisted, and clichéd, bested by its own inheritors. Even at a relatively spry 103 minutes, it feels long, especially as it offers tangential material such as Shakespeare in the Wild West, and strange narrative choices such as building up a surgery sequence and then telling us in the next scene that the sick character (perhaps the most striking of them) has died. These little issues accumulate to the point that My Darling Clementine ends up feeling like a decent but underwhelming western, far from being all all-time classic even in Ford’s filmography, especially when there’s Stagecoach or The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence to pick from.   But now I’m reviewing the reviews rather than the film itself.

  • She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

    She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) I was fully prepared to, well, maybe not dislike She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but at least not quite care for it. The topline description of the movie had nearly everything I don’t care about in a western: John Wayne, frontier fetishism, natives portrayed as bloodthirsty savages… But She Wore a Yellow Ribbon eventually gets better. For one thing, it’s in glorious Technicolor, with director John Ford showcasing Monument Valley at its best. For another, John Wayne isn’t playing the obnoxious creepy uncle characters he so often does, but a grizzled veteran about to retire and trying his best not to cause a war with the natives. (The similarities with Fort Apache are there—same director, star and setting, after all.)  The film adds in a little bit of more evenly gendered content with a female character tagging along the expedition, and after a few bloody confrontations throughout the film, the climax actually avoids wide-scale bloodshed through clever tricks. I still don’t quite like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but I can respect it, and was frequently amazed at the truly exceptional cinematography featured throughout the film.

  • Fort Apache (1948)

    Fort Apache (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) To modern viewers, classic Hollywood is as wild a territory as the wild west was to Eastern-Americans. Everything is harsher, our intuitions fail us and only the most traditional of Anglo-Saxon white males find themselves in friendly territory. But there are occasionally a few havens of civilization, even as tentative and rudimentary as they were. So it is that film historians are generally complimentary toward classic traditional western Fort Apache as marking a turning point in Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans, portraying them as capable, intelligence opponents motivated by real grievances and possessing distinct tribal identities. It’s not a portrayal that sustains much scrutiny today—clichéd, naïve, offensive … but still a step in the right direction compared to previous portrayals as of gratuitously murderous hordes. It also prefigures later nuanced portraits from director John Ford himself, such as The Searchers. As for Fort Apache itself, often considered the first of Ford’s “cavalry trilogy,” it features John Wayne and Henry Fonda butting heads as commanding officers of a small fort, with Wayne playing the reasonable one and Fonda playing the rigid autocratic one. Both of them do well, but Fonda is perhaps more remarkable for an unusual role as an unsympathetic character. There’s some great Monument Valley footage here, especially when the battle sequence starts. Fort Apache reasonably entertaining to watch, although definitely too long in its first hour as the film seems to be flaying about for a story to tell.

  • The Informer (1935)

    The Informer (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) An early Oscar favourite, The Informer is director John Ford’s look at 1922 Dublin, gripped in the fractious Irish War of Independence. Our protagonist is a flawed character who sees, in informing about a friend, a way to get tickets to America for him and his girlfriend. Things don’t turn out as planned. As befits such a sombre tale, the atmosphere of the film is fog-shrouded, bridging the transition between German expressionism and American film noir. Victor McLaglen plays our flawed hero, someone whose imperfections prevent him from doing the right or the best thing—he was given an Academy Award for the role. While some of the material feels overly blunt, there is still something very confident in the use of split-screen optical effect for storytelling purposes, giving us a glimpse in the characters’ inner thoughts. You can seek The Informer because it’s a John Ford movie, or because it’s an Academy Award Best Picture nominee, but it’s surprisingly engaging at time, and a counterpoint to the belief that early Hollywood played nicely with its characters and film endings.

  • Stagecoach (1939)

    Stagecoach (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2018) It’s absolutely normal to see Stagecoach and feel as if we’ve seen all of this before: While there were a lot of westerns in Hollywood history before Stagecoach, this John Ford film may have been one of the first notable examples of using the Western as a vehicle for drama and social commentary, helmed by a big-name director and starring well-known actors. As a result, Stagecoach ended up being the first of many: First true John Wayne starring role. First Western that earned sustained critical attention. First Western still worth viewing today, if only to establish the classical western formula before the deconstructionists took over. It has the problem of its qualities: being a straight-up well-executed western, it’s unbelievably racist toward Native Americans depicted as savage hordes. Its portrayal of gender roles is, well, what it was. The cavalry comes to the rescue unironically. On the other hand, the device of uniting different characters for a journey in a tightly enclosed space is a classic (allowing for dramatic friction and commentary outside the scope of a typical western) that has withstood the test of time rather well. Wayne isn’t too annoying as the designated hero of the film and it’s easy to see how his persona would become immensely popular as wider audiences were exposed to him through this film. Stagecoach is a classic western and as such today exemplifies them at their conventional rather than transcend the genre like so many other later westerns would do. It’s worth a look, if only as a yardstick against which more subversive westerns would be compared to.

  • The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

    The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2018) Do American movies ever get as angry as does The Grapes of Wrath? Squarely taking on injustice in Dustbowl-Depression era, the film follows a family forced away from their Oklahoma fame and led to seek work in California fields. It really doesn’t go well for most of the movie, as the “Okies” family encounters death and capitalist exploitation at every turn, only reaching satisfaction of sorts in the hands of a decent government program. While definitely softened from the original Steinbeck novel (including reordering episodes around to provide a good ending), The Grapes of Wrath is still a scathing denunciation of the free market in a time of need. It’s almost continuously infuriating as the protagonist family gets knocked down again—fortunately, the stirring ending manages to make things a bit better, delivering a memorable speech about the resiliency of the people (and the importance of being there to right wrongs) as an epilogue. Visually, the black-and-white quality of the film’s images reinforces the poverty of their surroundings, washing out any colour in a muddle of despair. Still, director John Ford knew what he was doing, and the film is still powerful even today. Consider that The Grapes of Wrath was a major production by a big studio … why is it that movies never get as angry as this one, even at a time when social disparities are ripe for criticism? 

  • How Green Was My Valley (1941)

    How Green Was My Valley (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) Not all Oscar-winning movies are created equal, and it’s mind-boggling that a dull movie such as How Green Was My Valley would beat out Citizen Kane as the best picture of 1941. Not that this is entirely surprising: Director John Ford’s film is the kind of maudlin chronicle of a small town that Hollywood finds it easy to love. Unchallenging, promoting easy virtues and executed with maximum pathos thanks to a few well-chosen deaths and overall atmosphere of nostalgic longing, topped with an entirely respectable sad ending. The title tells you almost everything you need to know. How you’ll react is up to you—I found myself intermittently entertained by some of the episodes, but generally bored by the entire thing. The black-and-white cinematography, though excellent, does How Green Was My Valley no favour—it’s one of those rare cases where a colour film would have been more appropriate (and not solely for Maureen O’Hara’s red hair). Everyone’s mileage will vary. I’d rather watch Citizen Kane another time.